Why Document Control is like having good hygiene.
Every construction project has a design, tender, acquisition and construction phase. The result should see a satisfied client along with a happy design and building team who are proud of their work (and everyone made a little money along the way).
This entire process relies on excellent communication and its driving force is document control. This is basically the tracking of incoming and outgoing correspondence.
Within a building process, you rely on so many factors to work together seamlessly. From designers, materials supply, delivery, and freight companies to subcontractors turning up on-site, on time and completing their work as per the contract documents. There are authority processes and sign-offs, progress payments being processed, client responses and payments, and the list goes on.
The administration of all these processes depends on a system of document control to answer queries contractually. Looking back on the historic events of a project we all need to track “how did we get here?”
In document control, you need to be able to track;
- What documents were received?
- How were they received?
- Are they the latest documents?
- Who received the documents?
- How were they sent?
- And when?
- And were they viewed/downloaded?
Then you want to file this information where it can be easily found. Filing and naming documents correctly is paramount and making sure that all document revisions are processed so stakeholders are operating of the same set.
“With the amount of documents involved with each project, let’s just say builders will either succeed or fail via their document control systems.”
The document control centre in Commnia features a clean, easy to use interface with in-depth filters.